My heart is heavy for the people left behind, the collateral damage. We grieve each of those people and we sit with heavy hearts as their deaths are politicized and turned into meaningless arguments for people who care only about their own agendas.

That is not happening here. We hear you and in a comparatively, infinitesimally small way feel you, you the collateral damage, you who are left behind to pick up the pieces, you who had those who died in your phone books, on your mantles and in your hearts.

I carry you with me when I look at my children. You are in the back of my throat as I try to find an explanation for these acts, because there is no explanation. I look at my babies and I hope that as I kiss them goodbye I get to see them again at the end of the day. When I do, I feel lucky and I hope that by continuing to love them and by continuing to live and trying to make lives better, I in some way am honoring those you lost. Those we lost.

The most important label each person who died had, the only one that really matters is one…Human.

Oh Social Media and the ability to contact anyone at anytime. It’s grand isn’t it. You find old friends, check out old boyfriends to see if they are fat and have lost their hair…oh and your allegedly ex-drug trafficking Dad (step) finds you after 25 years of 0 contact. That was fun! Here is how that conversation went(without names to protect the innocent) I will translate below the first message as he thought Spanish was the first way to reach out to me:

[Hi xxxx…I hope this finds you well…Perhaps you don’t remember me; but I remember you…I only wish to know that you are well and to let you know that I never forgot you…..xxxx]

ME:

Seriously!!!!

ME:

Why now?

HIM:

I know that it sounds weird but the truth is that because of all my mistakes I had to go to federal prison for almost 20 years…the last time I saw you in Cancun…5 months later I went to Miami as I usually did to buy stuff for the hotel I had in Cancun and the restaurant and I was followed by the FBI and had to flight to Colombia, I didn’t see my daughter and son and my exwife for months but later on they caught me in Dominican Republic and got arrested….the rest is history….

HIM:

Tell me about you…how you’re doing…I see to nice beautiful girls…tell me they are yours…they are beautiful…how’s your mom and XXXX…if I’m not mistaken…your mom has a hair salon in XXXXXXX…I’m really glad that she’s is fine..

HIM:

Are you married?…where are you at?….

ME:

I don’t even know where to begin. Surely you haven’t lost that con-man approach that made you so successful…I’m a little dissapointed that your in was to ask if I remembered you. You raised me, how would I not remember you. I called you Papi, lest you forget. I have a lot of memories, many more than what you wish I had. You left me. Maybe you were too high to remember that too, then you came back and you left again, then I found you thru your aunt and yes went to see you in Cancun and you had a new family. Did you abandon them too? I don’t really want to know. In my last communication with you, you said the only reason I wanted you in my life was to ask you for money…remember. I spent that night crying on my friends lap, the next two weeks in bed and then I was done. I released you.

In your wake you left a path of pain and destruction that apparently you think has gone away. You left my family in shambles, the FBI and the DEA didn’t just come after you. For a long time they had my mom under surveillance and brought her in for questioning too. I was a minor and they couldn’t touch me. My Uncle, as you well know was caught in Spain trying to smuggle your shit and when he was finally released and extradited to Colombia he was placed under permanent restriction to leave the country. I don’t speak to him either.

You think that you paid for your mistakes in jail. Ok. Please live your life and do something good. But I think that your type of tiger doesn’t change their stripes.

I have an amazing family of my own. Yes. But you don’t get to share them with me, I don’t want that life to touch this one. It’s to good and pure. I don’t know what your angle is or what you really want…but I don’t want it.

If you are making amends, good for you. I hope you find your peace. I wish you success and a good life…what’s left of it. I have many good memories of growing up with you, unfortunately they are also attached to many bad and horrific memories. I hope that you have those good memories too. I ask that if you have anything left in your heart for me you respect that I don’t want anything to do with you. I don’t want you to be but a ghost in my past for my family when they see you in pictures. Don’t reach out to my moms family either they don’t want to talk to you.

This is not an invitation to open a dialogue with you but a way to close a final chapter in a book. Never to be opened again. I wish you the best. XXXX

—————————

I probably shouldn’t have engaged him at all but I couldn’t help myself. I won’t lie I was at an outing in a beautiful location when I sat down by myself with my beer to enjoy the weather and the view and looked at my social media and saw the message and immediately went hot and cold. I think I sat in disbelief for what seemed like an hour but I returned my glass to the bar and got my car from valet and drove home crying. In a weird cloud then slept the rest of the day.

Now, I am not feeling so fragile. I think it was shock really. He hasn’t factored in my life for so long and I’m so glad. He was bad news, he was almost as bad as if she had married Pablo Escobar himself without knowing it, my poor Mom. I told her. Maybe I shouldn’t have but I don’t want it to slip later. I’m not a good liar and to her this is massive news.

Now, this piece of work is not my biological father, he was my Step Dad, from age 2 to 11, then he left and came back when I was 12, then left again until I was 17. Came back tried to buy back my love, showering me with jewelry and a car. Then disappearing again until I found him in Mexico. He was my Dad, that’s who I pictured when anyone said father. The pain of feeling abandoned, the lack of trust, the anger issues I had as a teenager, being a commitment-phobe until I met my husband at 30. All stems back to this guy.

rac·ist (ˈrāsəst/) noun
1. a person who believes that a particular race is superior to another

My head is swimming. There is so much going on around me, husband, kids, parents, work, church, school. That it sometimes feels like anything else is just too much. I have cut out people in my life that didn’t add to it’s progression, we all have those, the ones that you spend so much energy talking about that you end up spent and most visibly not sated. The ones that call you only when they need something or in my case lie to you and then try to justify it somehow. Most of these just drop off if you don’t contact them, some stop calling if you continually turn down outings, some you cut out because they offended or insulted you for the last time. I blatantly and very directly cut one of those tumors off about a year ago almost exactly and they emailed me a few days ago…SERIOUSLY! They’re email started with “I do not want to email you…” OH REALLY! They just “thought I should know” about a situation that after I checked it out wasn’t real…not a shock, since this person lives in their own warped sense of reality. This story I am not emotionally ready to share just yet but I will at some point.

I wasn’t shocked by this persons email or what he was “warning” me about, but by the fact that after knowing me for so many years professionally and personally they had the gall to say ” I don’t know if you…are a racist or not…” Great way to push my buttons…sort of. This person is completely unhinged with a seemingly OK life. Strained and struggling but for all intents appearing to be normal. The partner has no idea the depth of this persons behavioral problems, narcissistic sociopath, bipolar, thief, pathological liar…I am not equipped come up with all of the issues that I now know are bubbling right on the surface for this person. I did not respond, I will never respond to this person, as I promised them in our last communication that I would never speak to them again. I keep my promises but I’ll be dammed if somewhere in my heart and brain I held onto the word racist. So I am unloading this on you, to get it off my chest and maybe out of my system once and for all. Here is what I would say to That person were I speaking to them:
—-How dare you? You who threw your career away by calling the people who hired you and opened up so many doors for you, racists. Why? Because you were sloppy and were called out on it and you didn’t like it. You who embezzled money from people that were close to you and when you got caught you said they were liars, that they were blaming you because they were racists, you whom at every wrong, deceitful turn YOU HAVE taken you called out the race card, when caught. I have watched you for so many years dig the hole you find yourself in. Watching as the arsenal of stories of your stupid behavior grow and grow. For you to even consider the word racist in the realm of my name is mind boggling. I am a mutt, throw a dart at a globe and I probably have ancestry from there. I don’t believe that I am superior in race to anyone else. I don’t care what the tint of your skin is, your religious preference, what your sexual preference is or even what your political stance is. I don’t believe in judging people on those terms, I find that ignorant. My friends and family are there because they are good people who make me feel good about this world we live in and make me laugh despite the hardships and love me despite my own shortcomings and know that before anything else I hold my family (those related by blood or chosen over the years) most sacred. My personal motto is a Voltaire quote “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.” I believe this to my bones. For you to insinuate that maybe I could be a racist shows what a pathetic excuse for a human being you are. You are the definition of ignorant. You are the definition of stupid. But what you are first and foremost is blind…the saddest part is that the true beauty that is right in front of you is lost to you because you are a meaningless soul.

Like this:

I know it sounds worse than it actually is or is it? I just realized that it’s been almost a year since I last wrote. Anything. I started this blog in order to let out some creative steam and talk about things in my life that I truly thought could help other Moms’ out there who feel a bit painted into a corner. Then I wrote ‘Everything to Everyone’ and quickly realized that the blog was something that I could allow to fall through the cracks. Sorry to my four followers, I value your readership. I have started at least 10 articles in my head and one actually began to have a life on paper but didn’t get very far.

After rambling on about setting realistic timelines, I fell right off the wagon. I was adding lines to my calendar as quickly as I had taken them off. UGH! Then I had a ‘come to Jesus’ moment last summer as I was screwing up an incredibly fantastic job because I had too much on my plate. Being that I’m an independent contractor each job I take is crucial to building my business and my reputation. It was that moment I realized that I was still not following my own advice about taking things off the list that were not truly important. What a gigantic let down for myself! Here I was preaching to people about the beans falling off the plate and I had a broken plate all over the floor. Sadly, I don’t think the people that had hired me before have much faith in me and it’s not looking like I’m getting a second chance, which depresses me to no ends. I am also having to do some mending at home because I let my family down and am desperately hoping that I haven’t damaged my kids with my lack of interest and my absence in their lives.

I found myself taking inventory of all the things I was involved in and hadn’t gotten done. The list went from getting my roots done to sex. With work, friends and family all in between. It’s been difficult and I am not sure how much progress I’m making but I can say that every word I write brings me closer to my goal. I do want to continue to write my blog because I know that I am not alone in my struggles and I hope to pieces that as I hop over my hurdles, someone is better at taking my advice than I am.

Like this:

I often say that if you want to get something done you have to ask a busy person, but I wonder if that is really and truly true. Does it fall under the heading you can’t be everything to everyone? Probably. But that has never stopped me.

We, the brethren of the why do when you can overdo order, know what I’m talking about. Why go out and buy ready made Valentine’s Day cards when you can make them and decorate them yourself from scratch…oooh it wil be a fun project with your kid. How about this one, why get a cake from the store when you can stay up until 2am making your own cupcakes with homemade candy fairy wings on them, they’ll be so much more special. Or, don’t worry I’ll pick up the dogs’ pills after I drop the kids off at school before I go to work on my way to Target to get toilet paper and mouthwash and don’t worry about dinner I’m making homemade pot stickers. I can’t be alone, male and female we all do it, maybe its a disease like OCD or bulimia.

I fall into my predicament with good reason, at least that is what my conscious brain keeps blathering to me. I’m not a people pleaser, I don’t act because I get high of off someone elses happiness or because I can’t stand to upset them. I don’t take praise particularly well and I listen carefully to critical advice. I have become the everything to everyone person out of necessity. I do because I have to. If I don’t do it no one else will.

I’m not complaining. No one is holding a gun to my head and making me take on another project. I figured it out though, I need to be needed, everyone does. Some of us just have an unrealistic way of trying to make that happen. Like me, I make myself needed by doing so much people naturally assume I’ll take care of it or them and then I have to because it is expected and they won’t do it. Of course I’m writing this as my fantastic husband is tackling a build up of laundry and feeding the dog. I just wish the help would happen a little more often, but as I said before, I did it to myself. Again, Im not complaining.

If I’m being honest I’m falling short. I’m exhausted. So does it take a bigger person than me to say I can’t do that? The simple answer is I don’t know, but I’m starting to feel like a cliche. I’m spreading myself to thin, got too many balls in the air, my plate is full, my cup is running over……At this point I don’t think I can come up with another real reason as to why I haven’t finished something on time or forgotten to pay a bill. So suffice it to say that I think I am in good company, many women I know feel like they aren’t doing enough well enough. Guess what? You’re right.

So what is the trick to not becoming me. Say no and set flexible realistic time lines for what you are taking on. Get a calendar and write everything down, so you don’t miss deadlines and get a grip for what you are doing on a daily basis.

I began revising my calendar and giving myself real time lines. I’m no good with walking away from commitments I’ve already made, so, am I making significant enough changes so that I don’t feel like I’m being pulled in a million directions. I have to. I can say with some certainty that I am on the road to recovery.

The answer to my question is no you can’t be everything to everyone. At the end of the day, the only thing I’m 100% sure about is that even when I’m tired, cranky, running late, drinking too much coffee, staying up way too late to finish things I needed yesterday and making no apologies, I am who I am.

Like this:

Today I was going to put my plan of attack into action. But last night I decided I was going to make pumpkin puree and roast some seeds and apparently I let too much pumpkin down the disposal and we had a flood. I had no idea. Apparently its common knowledge but I usually throw organics out in the compost and food scraps go in the trash can, so I’m not all knowing on the business of disposal rules. No melted candy coating, no large amounts of rice and no potato skins, That’s it. Let’s talk about feeling like a dope!

My husband was and still is livid because the sink back flowed out to the washer drain and flooded the garage so right now I have no sink and no washer. So here is my plan for today…dry the garage and come up with a list of things that don’t go in the garbage disposal! In case you were wondering here is an easy way to remember:

1. Greasy stuff (meat, hot oils)

2. Hard Stuff (bones, egg shells, pits)

3. Fibrous stuff (ie pumpkins, carrots, artichokes)

4. Expandable stuff (ie rice, pasta)
I did some research on the subject and found this website helpful. So for more info click below.